Clinton’s email case may go on for decades: State Department

It would take American officials 75 years to finish reviewing thousands of pages of email records belonging to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her top aides, according to the US State Department.

Department lawyers argue that according to court filings submitted last week compiling the 450,000 requested pages of records for former Clinton aides Cheryl Mills, Jacob Sullivan and Patrick Kennedy would take three quarters of a century, the CNN reported Monday.

"Given the Department's current [Freedom of Information Act] (FOIA) workload and the complexity of these documents, it can process about 500 pages a month, meaning it would take approximately 16-and-2/3 years to complete the review of the Mills documents, 33-and-1/3 years to finish the review of the Sullivan documents, and 25 years to wrap up the review of the Kennedy documents -- or 75 years in total," the State Department said in the filing.

The statement comes after the Republican National Convention (RNC)’slaw against the State Department in March, accusing it of stalling the release of the records in defiance of a December FOIA request.

Meanwhile, State Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau declined Monday to address the RNC lawsuit specifically, but claimed that FOIA requests have tripled since 2008, overwhelming the department.

"The volume of FOIA requests received by the Department has tripled since 2008. In fiscal year 2015 alone we received approximately 22,000 FOIA requests," Trudeau said. "The requests are also frequently more complex and seek larger volumes of documents, requiring significantly more time, resources, and interagency coordination. While we have increased staffing for our FOIA office, our available resources are still nonetheless constrained," she said.

During her tenure as the top US diplomat between 2009 and 2013, Clinton sent and received more than 2,000 classified emails using a private email server at her home in New York.

The US State Department’s inspector general said in late May that Clinton’s personal server violated the department’s record-keeping rules and that it would have been rejected had she asked department officials.

Clinton also faces a separate probe by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

Republican lawmakers in Congress appear ready to protest strongly if the FBI closes its investigation without delivering indictments or offering a public explanation.

Former US House Speaker John Boehner and other Republican figures speculate that the federal investigation into Clinton's email fiasco could result in criminal charges against her, forcing her to drop out of the presidential race.

Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses:

www.presstv.co.uk